Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company.
Learn more about Allen...

Subscribe

Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your e-mail address and click "Subscribe."

Passwords for Creating Macros

Subscriber Fran Nault wrote about a problem she was having with Word 2000. It seems that ever since she installed the program, she hasn't been able to create macros. When she trys, she gets a message to enter her password.

This behavior could be caused by several different things, and to correct it you will need to figure out exactly why you are being asked for a password. One place to look as at the template in which you are trying to store the macro. If the template is protected in some way, then you may be asked for a password before the template can be written to. For instance, if the template file is write protected, or if it is stored on a network drive that doesn't allow others to write to it, then the password request you are seeing may be from the operating system itself, not from Word.

It is also possible that if you are trying to save the macro to your Normal.dot file, the file could be corrupted in some manner. You should get out of Word, rename the existing Normal.dot file, and then restart the program. If you are then able to create and save macros, then you know it was a problem with Normal.dot. Someone could also have password-protected the macro module in your Normal.dot file. This is done by displaying the project in VBA Editor, and then choosing Tools | Normal Properties and clicking on the Protection tab. Of course, renaming Normal.dot will help overcome this problem, as well.

Finally, it is possible that you have contracted a macro virus. Check Tools | Macro | Macros (or just press Alt+F8) to see if there are any macros installed on your system that you do not recognize. In most cases, you can eliminate this problem by renaming your Normal.dot file, as described earlier, and making sure there are no files in your Word startup folder.

Another good idea is to make sure that you have the latest Office service packs installed. These help to correct any esoteric problems that may exist, and they help to strengthen security in case you have contracted a macro virus.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1887) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

Leave your own comment:

*Name:

Email:

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIPNotify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITEHide my email address